THIS IS A META THREAD IN WHICH I'M JUST DOING 2 THINGS: RANTING AND LINKING TO OTHER DD THREADS THAT PREDATE GME MOONING BY MONTHS, THUS CALLING BULLSHIT ON THE 6 MILLION NEW DEGENERATES THAT "HAVE NEVER SEEN A SLV JPM SQUEEZE IDEA IN THIS SUB BEFORE THE SUITS WANTED TO SAVE MELVIN".

Do you realize reddit has a search function? Here is a list of posts that talk about a potential silver squeeze of SLV and JPM long, long, long before GME blasted off towards the moon. This is /wallstreetbets, not /GME. We trade multiple tickers, you dumbshit fucking "entry at $450" bag holding tards.
Great, you joined in the last 2 weeks because your autistic nephew made more money in 2 months than you've ever done.
Instead of just shutting up and watching the plethora of good DD posts rise and fall, you think this entire subreddit is only about holding one frickin' short squeeze as if that's the first time in history anyone got squoze, and downvote otherwise great research because you're frickin' terrified of losing money you couldn't afford to lose in the first place.
The entire global media didn't all pool together in 48 hours to present a uniform story of "buy silver" as part of some frickin' conspiracy designed to save a few medium-sized American hedge funds. No more than COVID was made by the Chinese to win Biden the presidency, anyway.
So here, since you guys are too damn handicapped to use a fucking search engine, are a list of DD/YOLO/Discussion posts about SLV and Silver written LONG BEFORE THE FUCKING GME SHORT SQUEEZE FINALLY ROCKETED!!! Jesus fuck, you tinfoil wearing sack of "fake news" American mouth-breathers with the collective IQ of a doorknob.
Just look at the fucking DD and pretend GME doesn't exist for 5 minutes. Silver. Is. A. Deep. Fucking. Value. Play! It has value. So much fucking deep value!
Yeah, no shit a market maker is holding silver positions when silver becomes more sought after, their job is to make fucking markets liquid. HOW ARE YOU GOING TO SUPPLY LIQUIDITY IF YOU DON'T HAVE SHIT TO SUPPLY?! DID YOU NOTICE HOW THEY HAVE A LOT OF PUTS AND A LOT OF CALLS, AND NOT JUST CALLS?!
DO YOU THINK NO BILLIONAIRES HELPED RIDE GME UP? Do you think it was 100% retail on one side and 100% Melvin and Citron on the other? Ah, you do. Of course, you do.
GREAT, WE GOT 8 MILLION DEGENERATES HERE. The 6M that didn't manage to find this place without hearing about GME having rocketed already, MAYBE DON'T FUCKING POST, COMMENT AND BRING YOUR DAMN IGNORANCE INTO A SUB THAT WAS ACTUALLY PROVIDING 2-10 DECENT TRADE IDEAS PER WEEK PRIOR TO THIS CULT FUCKING INFESTATION OF JACKASSES COSPLAYING RETARDS.
Whatever, here's a list none of you fuckers are capable of reading:
- 5 months ago, negovany wrote "Cornering Silver Market". The whole thing is about JPM and squeezing silver. $GME was at $5 back then and DeepFuckingValue was still getting laughed at for buying at every opportunity. Rest of you fuckers had barely gotten over the last cult following, PRPL mattresses. - 6 months ago, lucasandrew talks about "Why you should trade futures - WSB Edition", in which he mentions "Speaking of SLV, people have been posting all the reasons that JPM fucks with the SLV ETF". Yeah, I bet he took a fucking time-machine back 6 months in time after Citadel got stuck in the boo-boo.
- 6 months ago, LE0TARD0 implores the "SILVER CHAD'S RISE UP!". A straight fundamental thread on why silver is undervalued, not mention JPM. However, in the comments, a thread is started by kbtech18 and supplemented by ayyayyron talking about precisely JPM and their price manipulation of silver. YEAH, NO THAT NEVER HAPPENED, I'M SORRY FOR BEING A SHILL, LIKE FUCKING TAKE YOUR TINFOIL HATS OFF YOU DUMB SHITS!
- 5 months ago, Fuzzers wrote "September Silver Futures Contact - Something Aint Right Kids". After hailing his fellow degenerates, HE IMMEDIATELY SAYS: "I know there has been 6 billion posts about silver," before later writing "A large amount of contracts will stand for delivery such as in July. If its enough, maybe some of the big banks who have short positions might find themselves in hot water with their silver delivery amounts.". Isn't IT JUST GLORIOUS HOW MELVIN AND CITADEL HAVE ALL THESE TIME MACHINES TO MAKE UP IMAGINARY SILVER SQUEEZES 6 MONTHS BEFORE THEY WERE MADE UP? YOU GUYS ARE SO FUCKING DUMB RIGHT NOW, HOLY FUCK! DON'T INVEST IN SILVER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO, BUT PLEASE STOP WITH THE AMERICAN FAKE NEWS CONSPIRACY THEORIES, IT HURTS MY ALREADY FUCKED UP BRAIN, STOP, I DON'T CONSENT!
- 5 months ago (YOU GUYS, MAYBE YOU ARE RIGHT, ALL THE POSTS ARE FROM 5-6 MONTHS AGO, MAYBE IT REALLY IS A TIME TRAVELLING CONSPIRACY BY MELVIN AND CITADEL, YES, LET'S GO WITH THAT!), jetter23, wrote "Weekend Update - Silver". What did he have to share, in terms of ideas and DD? " 4a) Banks will continue to fight us on silver, but they are losing as they were massively short, ". WHAT SNEAKY FRICKIN' MARKET MANIPULATING HEDGE FUND SHILL HE IS, JUST GOING BACK SO FAR IN TIME TO SET US UP FOR THE PERFECT TRAP TO HELP CITADEL!!!
- jetter23 was quite active shilling 5 months ago, he also wrote "Weekend Update - Silver (DD#3)", where he just casually mentioned "JPM is currently under DOJ investigation AGAIN for price speculation on Silver. JPM is learning a VERY expensive lesson that when there is a pandemic, global FIAT currencies are crashing(like the DXY), and there is a run on physical metals - you can't be naked short on paper." IT'S ALMOST LIKE HE'S TALKING ABOUT SOME SORT OF SILVER SHORT SQUEEZE ON JPM, BUT HEY, THAT CAN'T BE IT BECAUSE THAT'S JUST A SCAM FAKE NEWS IDEA THAT'S 2-3 DAYS OLD, RIGHT?
- CCJ_Moon_6969 popped his head into the stream of tachyons, relatively talking to us from the present all the way 6 months ago, when he wrote "Silver. $SLV call options. New York Comex.". Do you remember kbtech18 from a few threads up? WELL, GEE WHIZ, HE COVERED THAT TIME STREAM TOO, talking about JPM and silver. 6 months ago. I mean, today. Reddit probably changed the timestamps on the posts. DAMN SHILLS! - rawvi wrote "JPM and Silver" 5 months ago, wanting to learn more about... time travel. Nothing to do with naked shorting of silver. BECAUSE THAT WASN'T EVER TALKED ABOUT ON THIS UNTIL 2 DAYS AGO, SO LIKE... HAH, HE COULDN'T HAVE BEEN ASKING ABOUT THAT, RIGHT?!?! CORPORATE SHILL BOT LOLOLOL!
WE LIKE THE STOCK!!!
Don't buy silver, it's a time-traveling scam orchestrated by Kenneth Griffin!

First edit:
Fuck this thing blew up. in all my years of redditing I have never been overwhelmed with wholesomeness like today. Thank you moderators for pinning this post - I will keep updating this on the regular! Before I go, if anyone wants further information going back before 25th January, here's a chronology of events from pre-squeeze till 4th February written by yours truly.
Valentines Day 14/02 edit:
Thank you all for your positive feedback and for literally all the awards. In all my life I never got platinum, let alone Argentium, and then Ternion!!!
I had a few celebratory drinks last night and I woke up totally shitfaced. It's valentine's day and I will be spending the day with the gf (who as some of you noticed from my page-article, we are expecting by the end of the month and she is right about to pop so she needs extra care and attention). I will be reading all the comments during the day, every time the gf turns her head a bit from me. I'm saving the comments with links to DDs so that I can add them later on.
I urge each and every one of you to read the new section 'HOW CAN YOU HELP ME WITH THIS THREAD'
Again thank you for everything and stay positive! Make sure to let the ones who care about you know that you care about them too today! Happy Valentines Day!
______________________________________________
It took me a very long time to collect and create abstracts, but I finally finished. I'm totally exhausted but quite proud of myself for bringing you everything you need to know so far in one thread.
I would love for this thread to be stickied, and if it does I plan to continue to update the same thread every day. If it does not I will continue posting updated versions every day. I also have my own website where I will keep updating this list.

Please help spread this around - knowledge is power. If you have a link to more DD leave a comment!

Please note that all Dates and Times posted are Central European Times (CET)
Obligatory: This is not financial advice. I am a smooth-brained holder of GME 🚀💎🤲 We like the stock!
______________________________________________

Doing your part

The Congress hearing will be streamed online on the 18th of February. Please email your representatives before this day.
What else can I do?
Make sure that you are not allowing shorts to borrow your shares to short-sell them!
​

How Can You Help Me and This Thread

First of all, THANK YOU. If you really want to help me and our brothers, here's what you can do:

1. Read and provide criticism, help me make better summaries and one-liners for the links to make it as readable as possible (think: ELI5)
2. Share this post to everyone you know - link this thread in WSB threads as comments so that we can educate the ignorant. We can link it in a way such as this: " Here’s a link to the motherload of DD for our favorite stonk " Empower others with knowledge
3. Look for any DD I have missed, old and new, especially in OG WSB from before the coup - send them to me as links in comments AND AS CHAT MESSAGES. I am going through all messages and I will update later today
4. We need to find a way to archive all the DD links from WSB so that if the mods of WSB catch on, we can have a backup of the threads before they delete them!
5. Collect more information on the coup, such as the info that was present from wallstreetbetstest and u/zjz posts. The retaliation messages, proof of removals of threads, bans for no reason ...etc.
6. Collect fake media articles that we can disprove so that I can compile a full list of bullshit media providers and articles
7. Let me know how I can better organize this thread.
8. and finally, don't forget to REPORT SHILLS. I would love to become a moderator and be able to investigate and ban shills myself. I applied but I don't think it will happen for now.

______________________________________________
Backdated posts added later in edits:

• 11-02 03:00
• Added the Chronology of events from pre-squeeze to 4th February.
• 09-02 12:45
• 22-01 13:55

______________________________________________

The List of DD Begins Here:

13-02 18:10 Shills on reddit being paid up to $650/week.

• More proof of shills
• More proof of shills
• More proof of shills

13-02 17:45 Level 2 data shows that at certain moments during trading days we may be just a few thousand shares away from hitting the high asks.
13-02 15:51 Citadel may have a long position in TSLA and will probably have to sell if it comes to liquidity when having to cover shorts (or bail out HFs again).
13-02 15:50 Intensive thesis on the Congress hearing this Thursday 18th Feb, investigating DTCC and Brokers for their complicity in enabling naked shorting, and likely collusion to shut down trading on the 28th Jan. You can help out by contacting representatives with the points mentioned in the thread.

• On Thursday you can watch the live stream here.

13-02 07:50 IV changes in options indicate that a $50 support level is established with a possible $50-72 channel. Analysing option prices shows that another run-up is coming.
13-02 06:30 At this point, if manipulators pushed the price down too hard it would have taken more shares off the market through puts, reducing the liquidity further, making it harder for the HFs.

• Price target prediction end of next week 19th Feb @ $58-59, with peaks above $60 to issue further Calls (to get paid the premium) then hold it below this line.
• The following week 26th Feb will end below $70 as there is a large off-set of calls vs Puts at this strike price, and a gain from 50-70 in two weeks will bring in more retail investors again.

13-02 05:15 We are currently in a liquidity crisis and shorts cannot cover in such an environment. Manipulators fought hard to keep it below $55, which was the strike price that would have hurt them the most.

• Tool to analyse the max pain price.

13-02 04:50 Prediction that during the Congress hearing this Thursday 18th Feb, GME trading may get halted until the hearing is over. DFV will hopefully explain all the fuckery that has happened so far, and the web of lies will begin to unravel. This would bring back retail investor interest and push the price back up.
13-02 04:00 A ranting reminder that any time someone is being an aggressive bully, they are operating from a place of vulnerability. Once you know this it’s easy to spot the chink in their armour that they’re trying to compensate for. We have the power.
13-02 03:00 GME is only where it is now because of manipulation. More importantly, if you think that HFs and the manipulators are planning to give up and ‘settle’ to cover at $50 you are wrong. They’re continually doubling down and won’t rest until they bring GME down to $0.
​
12-02 22:50 WSB Warzone - Since the most discussed ticker was GME, the post was deleted.
12-02 17:10 Compilation of Due Diligence

• The surge up to $480 was likely not short-squeezing, but reducing liquidity along with massive retail investment along with Gamma squeeze covering naked options.
• HFs liquidated significant positions of major holdings causing red days to have cash for covering positions.
• Shills, bots and crooked mods have infested WSB to spread FUD and delete posts and users fighting the good fight.
• Massive amount of $800 Calls expiring March 19th, along with massive amount of Puts for TSLA - as GME spiked TSLA tanks
• We will likely not see a massive squeeze, but a slow cover similar to TSLA short squeeze.

12-02 08:20 Shorting halted by most Brokers

• In fact iBorrowDesk only saw a 100k share movement from the 1.4M shares available to borrow all through the trading day.

12-02 07:00 FTDs: HFs naked short positions opened after 1st Feb (after the FINRA report data) and not before so that they do not get accounted for in the latest FINRA report. These new positions will have to be covered by 24th Feb if they do not want them to be shown in the next report.
12-02 02:00 Data assimilation (extractions from FINRA and Yahoo Finance) showing December 2020’s short positions that are in the red, and probably are not covered by now at significant losses (the real bagholders).

• Shorts were betting that GME wouldn’t pass $20.

​
11-02 16:40 GameStop Executives held the line and did not sell any shares at peak, even though they had the option to.
11-02 16:00 Why we don’t need a squeeze to win, Ryan Cohen’s changes to the company operation will blow up the company’s value.
11-02 15:00 Implied Volatility surges, particularly for $800 Calls expiring Feb 26th, indicating higher volatility in the days to come.
11-02 14:45 Calculations showing that:

• ~40M shares held by retail investors (~80%)
• ~54M shares held by institutions (~113%)
• ~48M shares as float (this is probably incorrect as Morningstar reports a float of 27M)
• GME detained at 193% total
• Real short interest at 138% (if Morningstar is correct, the SI would actually be 248%)

11-02 12:30 ETFs went on a buying spree, reducing float, and diamond handing.

• Link contains breakdowns of institutional shares held and changes

11-02 05:10 A list of potential upcoming changes to company operations that will make the stock much more interesting for retail investors.
11-03 03:50 A reminder from an older investor to always stick to your original plan and not get distracted by some shiny object. If you find something and ten people tell you that it’s worthless, then it isn’t.
11-02 03:00 The state of WSB since the moderator coup
11-02 01:35 Shorts could have covered on the upswing on the 10th Feb, then released fake news on Fidelity selling their shares then started short-selling and short-laddering to drop the price again.

• They start pumping weed stocks as a distraction on WSB.
• GME is inversely following SPY - liquidation.

11-02 01:10 A comparison of Short Interest data from providers.
​
10-02 08:30 Shorts have most probably been buying $800 Calls to make it seem like they ‘cancel out’ their short positions.
10-02 08:20 Figures, calculations and logic showing that the Short Interest is higher than anything reported.
10-02 07:50 An overview of what happened so far, with psychology and reasoning of HFs along the way.
10-02 06:15 DD on possibilities of covering and outlook of potential outcomes.
10-02 06:10 Crunching Finra’s SI report shows that SI is over 117%, and that there were 112% more shares shorted than were actually available to purchase on 27th January. It’s possible that between 1/13-17 about 7M shorts were covered, but they had to have continued to short like crazy since then to push the price down.
10-02 05:20 Naked shorting was probably aided by DTCC who probably shut down buying to stop the squeeze to avoid a scandal. Shorts likely hid their open positions via a loophole which generated synthetic longs. If this is correct there is a large amount of counterfeit shares floating in the market.
10-02 04:22 Finra reports 78% SI, while institutions own 206% (144M shares) of all outstanding shares. This could mean that actual SI is around 150%.
10-02 03:00 Finra releases SI data: 78.5%
​
09-02 20:00 A compilation of manipulative tactics and logical fallacies to help you identify when they are being attempted against you.
09-02 12:45 Biden administration cannot allow itself to lose trust at the beginning at the term, and HFs Brokers WS and the media may be in a worse position than we thought.
09-02 08:45 Cramer exposed - video from 2006 shows how himself (when he managed an HF) and other HFs manipulate markets.
09-02 08:20 Shares being bought around $270 after hours.
09-02 02:00 Proof that FINTEL are altering short data, with replies from CEO.

• More Proof.
• Further proof.

​
08-02 17:00 Shorts may provide fake data to FINRA for a relatively small fine which could help save them millions-billions.
08-02 14:15 Compilation of DD showing that nothing has changed no matter what the media is saying.
08-02 09:50 They are losing $2B ever 2.5 days
08-02 01:45 Why to buy GME regardless of a squeeze. The future of GameStop is bright.
​
07-02 16:45 Hypothesis that Melvin is just a tool for larger hedge fund to take over Citadel and take trillions from them.
07-02 16:40 Evidence shows the HFs likely use a loophole trick to appear as if they covered their shorts using synthetic longs generated from options.
07-02 13:30 A very useful spreadsheet to track and analyse stocks
07-02 03:45 There is no mathematical way shorts covered for Jan 13, 22, or 25 as is being reported by SI data providers - they are lying.
​
06-02 22:00 The interstellar yo-yo theory: every 13 days (settlement days) stock price increases and pushes back by selling more synthetic long positions (fake shares into the market), FTDs increase
06-02 18:20 Institutions hold 177% of float, proving the existence of a huge amount of synthetic longs.
​
05-02 23:40 HFs want you to think that they repositioned and covered their shorts, but calculations show that this was impossible and the conditions were not ideal to do this without incurring massive losses.
05-02 19:30 GME and AMC graph comparison, showing the exact same movement.
​
02-02 23:30 Analysis of 265,000 rows of SEC data shows massive amount of FTDs compared to the rest of the market - likely that it is a result of massive illegal share counterfeiting by shorts.
02-02 05:30 The market may collapse due to the creation of a massive number of preexisting synthetic longs that were bought and held. To fix it, market makers decided to make more, but their cure is also a poison they can't stop taking.
02-02 04:00 Melvin claims to have closed out their positions, but used an illegal loophole to make it seem like they have.
​
01-02 23:20 Short Interest appears to have fallen but in truth is being shoved under the rug of option traders.
01-02 20:45 A list of misinformation articles inducing FUD
01-02 20:30 Following the crumbs: How GME is exposing illegal activity
01-02 17:15 Psychological warfare - FUD and manipulated dips along with further short-selling to make you believe that you’ve missed the peak.
01-02 10:20 Evidence of massive naked short selling fraud.
01-02 02:30 Public data suggest massive securities fraud creating more shares than exist, and that retail investors may hold more than 100% of all outstanding shares.
​
31-01 09:10 Wall Street is freaking out because they are about to get caught doing extremely illegal shit that may implode the whole system - fake shares in the float.
25-01 23:30 Today’s co-ordinated attack: let the price run up only to jack up margin requirements, then dumped.
22-01 13:55 Make sure that you are not helping shorts borrow your shares and short sell by opting out with your broker! Some brokers settings are by default, so you have to change it yourself.
​
A chronology of events pre-squeeze till 4th February written by yours truly.

First edit:
Fuck this thing blew up. in all my years of redditing I have never been overwhelmed with wholesomeness like today. Thank you moderators for pinning this post - I will keep updating this on the regular! Before I go, if anyone wants further information going back before 25th January, here's a chronology of events from pre-squeeze till 4th February written by yours truly.
Valentines Day 14/02 edit:
Thank you all for your positive feedback and for literally all the awards. In all my life I never got platinum, let alone Argentium, and then Ternion!!!
I had a few celebratory drinks last night and I woke up totally shitfaced. It's valentine's day and I will be spending the day with the gf (who as some of you noticed from my page-article, we are expecting by the end of the month and she is right about to pop so she needs extra care and attention). I will be reading all the comments during the day, every time the gf turns her head a bit from me. I'm saving the comments with links to DDs so that I can add them later on.
I urge each and every one of you to read the new section 'HOW CAN YOU HELP ME WITH THIS THREAD'
Again thank you for everything and stay positive! Make sure to let the ones who care about you know that you care about them too today! Happy Valentines Day!
______________________________________________
It took me a very long time to collect and create abstracts, but I finally finished. I'm totally exhausted but quite proud of myself for bringing you everything you need to know so far in one thread.
I would love for this thread to be stickied, and if it does I plan to continue to update the same thread every day. If it does not I will continue posting updated versions every day. I also have my own website where I will keep updating this list.

Please help spread this around - knowledge is power. If you have a link to more DD leave a comment!

Please note that all Dates and Times posted are Central European Times (CET)
Obligatory: This is not financial advice. I am a smooth-brained holder of GME 🚀💎🤲 We like the stock!
______________________________________________

Doing your part

The Congress hearing will be streamed online on the 18th of February. Please email your representatives before this day.
What else can I do?
Make sure that you are not allowing shorts to borrow your shares to short-sell them!
​

How Can You Help Me and This Thread

First of all, THANK YOU. If you really want to help me and our brothers, here's what you can do:

1. Read and provide criticism, help me make better summaries and one-liners for the links to make it as readable as possible (think: ELI5)
2. Share this post to everyone you know - link this thread in WSB threads as comments so that we can educate the ignorant. We can link it in a way such as this: " Here’s a link to the motherload of DD for our favorite stonk " Empower others with knowledge
3. Look for any DD I have missed, old and new, especially in OG WSB from before the coup - send them to me as links in comments AND AS CHAT MESSAGES. I am going through all messages and I will update later today
4. We need to find a way to archive all the DD links from WSB so that if the mods of WSB catch on, we can have a backup of the threads before they delete them!
5. Collect more information on the coup, such as the info that was present from wallstreetbetstest and u/zjz posts. The retaliation messages, proof of removals of threads, bans for no reason ...etc.
6. Collect fake media articles that we can disprove so that I can compile a full list of bullshit media providers and articles
7. Let me know how I can better organize this thread.
8. and finally, don't forget to REPORT SHILLS. I would love to become a moderator and be able to investigate and ban shills myself. I applied but I don't think it will happen for now.

______________________________________________
Backdated posts added later in edits:

• 11-02 03:00
• Added the Chronology of events from pre-squeeze to 4th February.
• 09-02 12:45
• 22-01 13:55

______________________________________________

The List of DD Begins Here:

13-02 18:10 Shills on reddit being paid up to $650/week.

• More proof of shills
• More proof of shills
• More proof of shills

13-02 17:45 Level 2 data shows that at certain moments during trading days we may be just a few thousand shares away from hitting the high asks.
13-02 15:51 Citadel may have a long position in TSLA and will probably have to sell if it comes to liquidity when having to cover shorts (or bail out HFs again).
13-02 15:50 Intensive thesis on the Congress hearing this Thursday 18th Feb, investigating DTCC and Brokers for their complicity in enabling naked shorting, and likely collusion to shut down trading on the 28th Jan. You can help out by contacting representatives with the points mentioned in the thread.

• On Thursday you can watch the live stream here.

13-02 07:50 IV changes in options indicate that a $50 support level is established with a possible $50-72 channel. Analysing option prices shows that another run-up is coming.
13-02 06:30 At this point, if manipulators pushed the price down too hard it would have taken more shares off the market through puts, reducing the liquidity further, making it harder for the HFs.

• Price target prediction end of next week 19th Feb @ $58-59, with peaks above $60 to issue further Calls (to get paid the premium) then hold it below this line.
• The following week 26th Feb will end below $70 as there is a large off-set of calls vs Puts at this strike price, and a gain from 50-70 in two weeks will bring in more retail investors again.

13-02 05:15 We are currently in a liquidity crisis and shorts cannot cover in such an environment. Manipulators fought hard to keep it below $55, which was the strike price that would have hurt them the most.

• Tool to analyse the max pain price.

13-02 04:50 Prediction that during the Congress hearing this Thursday 18th Feb, GME trading may get halted until the hearing is over. DFV will hopefully explain all the fuckery that has happened so far, and the web of lies will begin to unravel. This would bring back retail investor interest and push the price back up.
13-02 04:00 A ranting reminder that any time someone is being an aggressive bully, they are operating from a place of vulnerability. Once you know this it’s easy to spot the chink in their armour that they’re trying to compensate for. We have the power.
13-02 03:00 GME is only where it is now because of manipulation. More importantly, if you think that HFs and the manipulators are planning to give up and ‘settle’ to cover at $50 you are wrong. They’re continually doubling down and won’t rest until they bring GME down to $0.
​
12-02 22:50 WSB Warzone - Since the most discussed ticker was GME, the post was deleted.
12-02 17:10 Compilation of Due Diligence

• The surge up to $480 was likely not short-squeezing, but reducing liquidity along with massive retail investment along with Gamma squeeze covering naked options.
• HFs liquidated significant positions of major holdings causing red days to have cash for covering positions.
• Shills, bots and crooked mods have infested WSB to spread FUD and delete posts and users fighting the good fight.
• Massive amount of $800 Calls expiring March 19th, along with massive amount of Puts for TSLA - as GME spiked TSLA tanks
• We will likely not see a massive squeeze, but a slow cover similar to TSLA short squeeze.

12-02 08:20 Shorting halted by most Brokers

• In fact iBorrowDesk only saw a 100k share movement from the 1.4M shares available to borrow all through the trading day.

12-02 07:00 FTDs: HFs naked short positions opened after 1st Feb (after the FINRA report data) and not before so that they do not get accounted for in the latest FINRA report. These new positions will have to be covered by 24th Feb if they do not want them to be shown in the next report.
12-02 02:00 Data assimilation (extractions from FINRA and Yahoo Finance) showing December 2020’s short positions that are in the red, and probably are not covered by now at significant losses (the real bagholders).

• Shorts were betting that GME wouldn’t pass $20.

​
11-02 16:40 GameStop Executives held the line and did not sell any shares at peak, even though they had the option to.
11-02 16:00 Why we don’t need a squeeze to win, Ryan Cohen’s changes to the company operation will blow up the company’s value.
11-02 15:00 Implied Volatility surges, particularly for $800 Calls expiring Feb 26th, indicating higher volatility in the days to come.
11-02 14:45 Calculations showing that:

• ~40M shares held by retail investors (~80%)
• ~54M shares held by institutions (~113%)
• ~48M shares as float (this is probably incorrect as Morningstar reports a float of 27M)
• GME detained at 193% total
• Real short interest at 138% (if Morningstar is correct, the SI would actually be 248%)

11-02 12:30 ETFs went on a buying spree, reducing float, and diamond handing.

• Link contains breakdowns of institutional shares held and changes

11-02 05:10 A list of potential upcoming changes to company operations that will make the stock much more interesting for retail investors.
11-03 03:50 A reminder from an older investor to always stick to your original plan and not get distracted by some shiny object. If you find something and ten people tell you that it’s worthless, then it isn’t.
11-02 03:00 The state of WSB since the moderator coup
11-02 01:35 Shorts could have covered on the upswing on the 10th Feb, then released fake news on Fidelity selling their shares then started short-selling and short-laddering to drop the price again.

• They start pumping weed stocks as a distraction on WSB.
• GME is inversely following SPY - liquidation.

11-02 01:10 A comparison of Short Interest data from providers.
​
10-02 08:30 Shorts have most probably been buying $800 Calls to make it seem like they ‘cancel out’ their short positions.
10-02 08:20 Figures, calculations and logic showing that the Short Interest is higher than anything reported.
10-02 07:50 An overview of what happened so far, with psychology and reasoning of HFs along the way.
10-02 06:15 DD on possibilities of covering and outlook of potential outcomes.
10-02 06:10 Crunching Finra’s SI report shows that SI is over 117%, and that there were 112% more shares shorted than were actually available to purchase on 27th January. It’s possible that between 1/13-17 about 7M shorts were covered, but they had to have continued to short like crazy since then to push the price down.
10-02 05:20 Naked shorting was probably aided by DTCC who probably shut down buying to stop the squeeze to avoid a scandal. Shorts likely hid their open positions via a loophole which generated synthetic longs. If this is correct there is a large amount of counterfeit shares floating in the market.
10-02 04:22 Finra reports 78% SI, while institutions own 206% (144M shares) of all outstanding shares. This could mean that actual SI is around 150%.
10-02 03:00 Finra releases SI data: 78.5%
​
09-02 20:00 A compilation of manipulative tactics and logical fallacies to help you identify when they are being attempted against you.
09-02 12:45 Biden administration cannot allow itself to lose trust at the beginning at the term, and HFs Brokers WS and the media may be in a worse position than we thought.
09-02 08:45 Cramer exposed - video from 2006 shows how himself (when he managed an HF) and other HFs manipulate markets.
09-02 08:20 Shares being bought around $270 after hours.
09-02 02:00 Proof that FINTEL are altering short data, with replies from CEO.

• More Proof.
• Further proof.

​
08-02 17:00 Shorts may provide fake data to FINRA for a relatively small fine which could help save them millions-billions.
08-02 14:15 Compilation of DD showing that nothing has changed no matter what the media is saying.
08-02 09:50 They are losing $2B ever 2.5 days
08-02 01:45 Why to buy GME regardless of a squeeze. The future of GameStop is bright.
​
07-02 16:45 Hypothesis that Melvin is just a tool for larger hedge fund to take over Citadel and take trillions from them.
07-02 16:40 Evidence shows the HFs likely use a loophole trick to appear as if they covered their shorts using synthetic longs generated from options.
07-02 13:30 A very useful spreadsheet to track and analyse stocks
07-02 03:45 There is no mathematical way shorts covered for Jan 13, 22, or 25 as is being reported by SI data providers - they are lying.
​
06-02 22:00 The interstellar yo-yo theory: every 13 days (settlement days) stock price increases and pushes back by selling more synthetic long positions (fake shares into the market), FTDs increase
06-02 18:20 Institutions hold 177% of float, proving the existence of a huge amount of synthetic longs.
​
05-02 23:40 HFs want you to think that they repositioned and covered their shorts, but calculations show that this was impossible and the conditions were not ideal to do this without incurring massive losses.
05-02 19:30 GME and AMC graph comparison, showing the exact same movement.
​
02-02 23:30 Analysis of 265,000 rows of SEC data shows massive amount of FTDs compared to the rest of the market - likely that it is a result of massive illegal share counterfeiting by shorts.
02-02 05:30 The market may collapse due to the creation of a massive number of preexisting synthetic longs that were bought and held. To fix it, market makers decided to make more, but their cure is also a poison they can't stop taking.
02-02 04:00 Melvin claims to have closed out their positions, but used an illegal loophole to make it seem like they have.
​
01-02 23:20 Short Interest appears to have fallen but in truth is being shoved under the rug of option traders.
01-02 20:45 A list of misinformation articles inducing FUD
01-02 20:30 Following the crumbs: How GME is exposing illegal activity
01-02 17:15 Psychological warfare - FUD and manipulated dips along with further short-selling to make you believe that you’ve missed the peak.
01-02 10:20 Evidence of massive naked short selling fraud.
01-02 02:30 Public data suggest massive securities fraud creating more shares than exist, and that retail investors may hold more than 100% of all outstanding shares.
​
31-01 09:10 Wall Street is freaking out because they are about to get caught doing extremely illegal shit that may implode the whole system - fake shares in the float.
25-01 23:30 Today’s co-ordinated attack: let the price run up only to jack up margin requirements, then dumped.
22-01 13:55 Make sure that you are not helping shorts borrow your shares and short sell by opting out with your broker! Some brokers settings are by default, so you have to change it yourself.
​
A chronology of events pre-squeeze till 4th February written by yours truly.

The Russia Mafia is part and parcel of Russian intelligence. Russia is a mafia state. That is not a metaphor. Putin is head of the Mafia. So the fact that they have deep ties to Donald Trump is deeply disturbing. Trump conducted FIVE completely private meetings and conferences with Putin, and has gone to great lengths to prevent literally anyone, even people in his administration, from learning what was discussed.
According to an ex-KGB spy...Russia has been cultivating Trump as an asset for 40 years.
Trump was first compromised by the Russians in the 80s. In 1984, the Russian Mafia began to use Trump real estate to launder money.
In 1984, David Bogatin — a convicted Russian mobster and close ally of Semion Mogilevich, a major Russian mob boss — met with Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened. Bogatin bought five condos from Trump at that meeting. Those condos were later seized by the government, which claimed they were used to launder money for the Russian mob.
“During the ’80s and ’90s, we in the U.S. government repeatedly saw a pattern by which criminals would use condos and high-rises to launder money,” says Jonathan Winer, a deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement in the Clinton administration. “It didn’t matter that you paid too much, because the real estate values would rise, and it was a way of turning dirty money into clean money. It was done very systematically, and it explained why there are so many high-rises where the units were sold but no one is living in them.”
When Trump Tower was built, as David Cay Johnston reports in The Making of Donald Trump, it was only the second high-rise in New York that accepted anonymous buyers.
In 1987, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Yuri Dubinin, arranged for Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to Moscow to consider business prospects.
A short while later he made his first call for the dismantling of the NATO alliance. Which would benefit Russia.
At the beginning of 1990 Donald Trump owed a combined $4 billion to more than 70 banks, with $800 million personally guaranteed by his own assets, according to Alan Pomerantz, a lawyer whose team led negotiations between Trump and 72 banks to restructure Trump’s loans. Pomerantz was hired by Citibank.
Interview with Pomerantz
Trump agreed to pay the bond lenders 14% interest, roughly 50% more than he had projected, to raise $675 million. It was the biggest gamble of his career. Trump could not keep pace with his debts. Six months later, the Taj defaulted on interest payments to bondholders as his finances went into a tailspin.
In July 1991, Trump’s Taj Mahal filed for bankruptcy.
So he bankrupted a casino? What about Ru...
The Trump Taj Mahal casino broke anti-money laundering rules 106 times in its first year and a half of operation in the early 1990s, according to the IRS in a 1998 settlement agreement.
The casino repeatedly failed to properly report gamblers who cashed out $10,000 or more in a single day, the government said."The violations date back to a time when the Taj Mahal was the preferred gambling spot for Russian mobsters living in Brooklyn, according to federal investigators who tracked organized crime in New York City. They also occurred at a time when the Taj Mahal casino was short on cash and on the verge of bankruptcy."
....ssia
So by the mid 1990s Trump was then at a low point of his career. He defaulted on his debts to a number of large Wall Street banks and was overleveraged. Two of his businesses had declared bankruptcy, the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City and the Plaza Hotel in New York, and the money pit that was the Trump Shuttle went out of business in 1992. Trump companies would ultimately declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy two more times.
Trump was $4 billion in debt after his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt. No U.S. bank would touch him. Then foreign money began flowing in through Deutsche Bank.
The extremely controversial Deutsche Bank. The Nazi financing, Auschwitz building, law violating, customer misleading, international currency markets manipulating, interest rate rigging, Iran & others sanctions violating, Russian money laundering, salvation of Donald J. Trump.
The agreeing to a $7.2 billion settlement with with the U.S. Department of Justice over its sale and pooling of toxic mortgage securities and causing the 2008 financial crisis bank.
The appears to have facilitated more than half of the $2 trillion of suspicious transactions that were flagged to the U.S. government over nearly two decades bank.
The embroiled in a $20b money-laundering operation, dubbed the Global Laundromat. The launders money for Russian criminals with links to the Kremlin, the old KGB and its main successor, the FSB bank.
That bank.
Three minute video detailing Trump's debts and relationship with Deutsche Bank
In 1998, Russia defaulted on $40 billion in debt, causing the ruble to plummet and Russian banks to close. The ensuing financial panic sent the country’s oligarchs and mobsters scrambling to find a safe place to put their money. That October, just two months after the Russian economy went into a tailspin, Trump broke ground on his biggest project yet.
Directly across the street from the United Nations building.
Russian Linked-Deutsche Bank arranged to lend hundreds of millions of dollars to finance Trump’s construction of a skyscraper next to the United Nations.
Construction got underway in 1999.
Units on the tower’s priciest floors were quickly snatched up by individual buyers from the former Soviet Union, or by limited liability companies connected to Russia. “We had big buyers from Russia and Ukraine and Kazakhstan,” sales agent Debra Stotts told Bloomberg. After Trump World Tower opened, Sotheby’s International Realty teamed up with a Russian real estate company to make a big sales push for the property in Russia. The “tower full of oligarchs,” as Bloomberg called it, became a model for Trump’s projects going forward. All he needed to do, it seemed, was slap the Trump name on a big building, and high-dollar customers from Russia and the former Soviet republics were guaranteed to come rushing in.
New York City real estate broker Dolly Lenz told USA TODAY she sold about 65 condos in Trump World at 845 U.N. Plaza in Manhattan to Russian investors, many of whom sought personal meetings with Trump for his business expertise.
“I had contacts in Moscow looking to invest in the United States,” Lenz said. “They all wanted to meet Donald. They became very friendly.”Lots of Russian and Eastern European Friends. Investing lots of money. And not only in New York.
Miami is known as a hotspot of the ultra-wealthy looking to launder their money from overseas. Thousands of Russians have moved to Sunny Isles. Hundreds of ultra-wealthy former Soviet citizens bought Trump properties in South Florida. People with really disturbing histories investing millions and millions of dollars. Igor Zorin offers a story with all the weirdness modern Miami has to offer: Russian cash, a motorcycle club named after Russia’s powerful special forces and a condo tower branded by Donald Trump.
Thanks to its heavy Russian presence, Sunny Isles has acquired the nickname “Little Moscow.”
From an interview with a Miami based Siberian-born realtor... “Miami is a brand,” she told me as we sat on a sofa in the building’s huge foyer. “People from all over the world want property here.” Developers were only putting up luxury properties because they “know that the crisis has not affected people with money,”
Most of her clients are Russian—there are now three direct flights per week between Moscow and Miami—and increasing numbers are moving to Florida after spending a few years in London first. “It’s a money center, and it’s a lot easier to get your money there than directly to the US, because of laws and tax issues,” she said. “But after your money has been in London for a while, you can move it to other places more easily.”
In the 2000s, Trump turned to licensing deals and trademarks, collecting a fee from other companies using the Trump name. This has allowed Trump to distance himself from properties or projects that have failed or encountered legal trouble and provided a convenient workaround to help launch projects, especially in Russia and former Soviet states, which bear Trump’s name but otherwise little relation to his general business.
Enter Bayrock Group, a development company and key Trump real estate partner during the 2000s. Bayrock partnered with Trump in 2005 and invested an incredible amount of money into the Trump organization under the legal guise of licensing his name and property management. Bayrock was run by two investors:
Felix Sater, a Russian-born mobster who served a year in prison for stabbing a man in the face with a margarita glass during a bar fight, pleaded guilty to racketeering as part of a mafia-driven "pump-and-dump" stock fraud and then escaped jail time by becoming a highly valued government informant. He was an important figure at Bayrock, notably with the Trump SoHo hotel-condominium in New York City, and has said under oath that he represented Trump in Russia and subsequently billed himself as a senior Trump advisor, with an office in Trump Tower. He is a convict who became a govt cooperator for the FBI and other agencies. He grew up with Micahel Cohen --Trump's disbarred former "fixer" attorney. Cohen's family owned El Caribe, which was a mob hangout for the Russian Mafia in Brooklyn. Cohen had ties to Ukrainian oligarchs through his in-laws and his brother's in-laws. Felix Sater's father had ties to the Russian mob.
Tevfik Arif, a Kazakhstan-born former "Soviet official" who drew on bottomless sources of money from the former Soviet republic. Arif graduated from the Moscow Institute of Trade and Economics and worked as a Soviet trade and commerce official for 17 years before moving to New York and founding Bayrock. In 2002, after meeting Trump, he moved Bayrock’s offices to Trump Tower, where he and his staff of Russian émigrés set up shop on the twenty-fourth floor.
Arif was offering him a 20 to 25 percent cut on his overseas projects, he said, not to mention management fees. Trump said in the deposition that Bayrock’s Tevfik Arif “brought the people up from Moscow to meet with me,”and that he was teaming with Bayrock on other planned ventures in Moscow. The only Russians who are likely have the resources and political connections to sponsor such ambitious international deals are the corrupt oligarchs.
In 2005, Trump told The Miami Herald “The name has brought a cachet to certain areas that wouldn’t have had it,” Dezer said Trump’s name put Sunny Isles Beach on the map as a classy destination — and the Trump-branded condo units sold “10 to 20 percent higher than any of our competitors, and at a faster pace.”“We didn’t have any foreclosures or anything, despite the crisis.”
In a 2007 deposition that was part of his unsuccessful defamation lawsuit against reporter Timothy O’Brien Trump testified "that Bayrock was working their international contacts to complete Trump/Bayrock deals in Russia, Ukraine, and Poland. He testified that “Bayrock knew the investors” and that “this was going to be the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Moscow, Kiev, Istanbul, et cetera, and Warsaw, Poland.”
In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. gave the following statement to the “Bridging U.S. and Emerging Markets Real Estate” conference in Manhattan: “[I]n terms of high-end product influx into the United States, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets; say in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo and anywhere in New York. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
In July 2008, Trump sold a mansion in Palm Beach for $95 million to Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch. Trump had purchased it four years earlier for $41.35 million. The sale price was nearly $54 million more than Trump had paid for the property. This was the height of the recession when all other property had plummeted in value. Must be nice to have so many Russian oligarchs interested in giving you money.
In 2013, Trump went to Russia for the Miss Universe pageant “financed in part by the development company of a Russian billionaire Aras Agalarov.… a Putin ally who is sometimes called the ‘Trump of Russia’ because of his tendency to put his own name on his buildings.” He met with many oligarchs. Timeline of events. Flight records show how long he was there.
Video interview in Moscow where Trump says "...China wanted it this year. And Russia wanted it very badly." I bet they did.
Also in 2013, Federal agents busted an “ultraexclusive, high-stakes, illegal poker ring” run by Russian gangsters out of Trump Tower. They operated card games, illegal gambling websites, and a global sports book and laundered more than $100 million. A condo directly below one owned by Trump reportedly served as HQ for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” connected to Semion Mogilevich.
In 2014, Eric Trump told golf reporter James Dodson that the Trump Organization was able to expand during the financial crisis because “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia. I said, 'Really?' And he said, 'Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programmes. We just go there all the time.’”
A 2015 racketeering case against Bayrock, Sater, and Arif, and others, alleged that: “for most of its existence it [Bayrock] was substantially and covertly mob-owned and operated,” engaging “in a pattern of continuous, related crimes, including mail, wire, and bank fraud; tax evasion; money laundering; conspiracy; bribery; extortion; and embezzlement.” Although the lawsuit does not allege complicity by Trump, it claims that Bayrock exploited its joint ventures with Trump as a conduit for laundering money and evading taxes. The lawsuit cites as a “Concrete example of their crime, Trump SoHo, [which] stands 454 feet tall at Spring and Varick, where it also stands monument to spectacularly corrupt money-laundering and tax evasion.”
In 2016, the Trump Presidential Campaign was helped by Russia.
(I don't have the presidential term sourced yet. I'll post an update when I do. I'm sure you probably remember most of them...sigh. TY to the main posters here. Obviously I'm standing on your shoulders having taken a lot of the information or articles from here).

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The sound of the cutting bars was loud, the city hushed even as it wailed in pain. Each time the powered cutting bars (Mark II) ripped through the tree rapidly, felling it. Mal-Kar and Karelesh used cutting bars given to them by a Terran to cut the trees into smaller lengths. Lu'ucilu'u and I used stick-on graviton lifters and a tractor-pressor beam to move the logs to the sides of my tank, the sides of the two buses, the sides of the combat grav-lifters. There other members of my work crew tied them to the sides with heavy cargo straps.
Several of the civilians manning "Refit Point Delta" were filling sandbags, working tirelessly to shovel dirt into sacks that they tied off and stacked. The sandbags were passed from person to person in a living chain, to be put upon the vehicles as one more layer of armor. They were stacked on the sides of grav-lifters, my tank, and secured with endosteel cargo netting. They were layered two layers thick inside the hoverbuses, with panels of endosteel plating in between the two layers.
Which was why both buses had Terran grav-lifters welded to the side to help lift the massive public transports.
A white flash made everything go flat seeming as the shadows vanished. The rumble came next, the shockwave moving the trees back and forth.
ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC flashed in my vision right before another white flash lit the sky.
The civilians and what few military I had with me ignored it, continuing their work.
A N'Kar who had been a servant for a Most High was half out from under hover-fan three's skirt. Cables went from the power plugin on a nearby grav-lifter and vanished under my tank, allowing the N'Kar to weld a patch to the hoverfan skirt to fix a hole blown in it by Precursor fire.
I leaned forward and rested my head against the battlesteel of my tank, closing my eyes and feeling exhaustion fill me.
I had been awake for twenty hours since I had left the medical clinic and led my men into the burning city again.
Twenty more hours in the burning hellscape that had been a living city.
Five thousand people sealed into the bunkers even as they cried out to me to not entomb them below the earth.
But so many dead were sprawled in the streets, half-visible from collapsed buildings, or reduced to a smear on the wall.
You cannot save them all, Ha'almo'or, the matron's voice came back to me.
No, but I can try, I told her in my mind.
"Most High, eat," Feelmeenta urged me, tugging on my lower right arm.
"I am not hungry," I told her.
It was true. I was too exhausted to feel hunger any more.
"Eat," my electronic warfare specialist ordered. She held up a ration bar. "Eat, or I'll tell the Terrans you have been awake for twice as long as you should have been as well as the fact you escaped from the hospital."
I sighed, taking the ration bar and peeling the plas off of it. It wasn't Great Herd standard. The wrapper was brown, with a picture of a smiling Lanaktallan matron on the wrapper and the words "Goody Yum Yum Bar" on the side.
The Matron was in charge of making sure that the colts, fillies, calves, and wounded were all seen to. A Terran had asked her to smile real quick and then her image had appeared on the package the next time I had been handed a ration bar.
I'd seen the Terrans of the Sustainment Battalion pull them out of their fabulous nanoforges by the box, each box containing thousands of bars.
The bar was good. Rough coarse grain seed and dough, some kind of sweet and chewy center. It filled my first stomach, easing the dull pain, and I felt energy return to my body.
"Do we have any targets or is it another sweep?" I asked, taking another bar and opening it.
This one tasted of berries, was white with a center of sweet and thick crumbly dough.
It was the best thing I had ever tasted.
"Another sweep," Feelmeenta told me. She held up a canteen and I gratefully took it, drinking deep, enjoying the slight tart citrus flavor.
It was such little things, that the Terrans did and we were emulating, that made life bearable.
ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC
I hardly noticed the flash, the rumble, of the gentle push of the shockwave that made the treetop sway.
Two civilians I did not know exited the interior of my tank. The waste reclaimation system had failed, leaving the crew compartment thick with dung on the floor. I had helped scoop it out with sheets of plas during the day.
When we had arrived the two civilians, both Telkan, had gone in with pressure washers.
The N'Kar slid out from under the hoverfan, nervously rubbing his skin. "It should hold, Most High," he said. His voice was soft and submissive, like all of his people, but I could see the determination to do a job well done in his eyes.
"I thank you," I told him. "Once we leave will you be going to the shelters?"
He shook his head. "No. We will stay. We have guns now, given to us by the Terrans, as well as battlescreen projectors to protect this place. We will stay here, in case you need us."
The makeshift ambulance nosed its way into the clearing, settling down with the snarl of badly tuned graviton lifters. The back lowered and the filly from the first day clopped down. Gone was the uncertainty of youth, she moved with her head high, one hand on her medical bag, and she surveyed the area like a lord of old.
Two Goodbois and a Simba moved with her, the Goodbois on either side and the Simba behind her. All of them had the holographic light to make them look furry and somewhat harmless.
I had seen the twin linked rapid fire autocannons on the back of a Simba rip apart a Precursor war machine ten times the Simba's side with less than three seconds of fire. I had seen a Goodboi fire missiles at a Precursor air striker, knocking it out of the sky in a greasy explosion and rain of burnt and blackened metal, seen them fire the heavy tribarrel that had risen out of their back to destroy Precursor machines.
I had also seen them search out survivors in a collapsed building.
Like all things Terran, looks were deceiving.
When she saw me she trotted up to me even as I unwrapped another Goody Yum Yum bar.
"You will hold still, Most High," she said. Her voice was raspy, the voice of an older Matron, and her old eyes were red from exhaustion, but still her eyes and voice were steady.
"As you wish," I told her.
She ran the scanner over my lower abdomen and where my upper torso joined my lower body.
"Your heart is in good condition. The cyberware reports no cardiac events," she said, drawing up. "Your bloodwork looks good and your vitals are excellent once exhaustion and combat has been accounted for. How are the eyes?"
"Good. I am used to them now," I told her.
"And your foot?" she asked, pointing at the cybernetic replacement for my hoof.
"Still slightly heavy to my senses," I said.
She nodded slowly. "That it to be expected. You are cleared for duty, Most High Ha'almo'or."
"I thank you," I told her.
"Ambulance One is ready to deploy with you," she said. She trotted around to face the makeshift ambulance with "GREAT HERD EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICES" painted on the side with blue paint stick. She turned at the waist to look at me. "Do not attempt to argue with me, Most High."
"I welcome your efforts," I told her.
She could feel my sincerity and nodded. A nod of a Matron far older then the teenager I had seen on the first day crying over the dead.
She trotted back to the makeshift ambulance, the Goodbois and the Simba following her.
Again, the warning, followed by a rapid fire series of detonations.
The Terrans were, to use their own words, 'giving the clankers Hell' out there, pushing them back step by bloody step from the cities even as they sent into the cities their power armor infantry and tanks in with Most High A'armo'o's tanks in order to clear out the Precursor Autonomous War Machines.
"Your tank's ready," the two Telkan said. They were wearing plastic coveralls over heavy laborer coveralls to keep from getting wet.
"Thank you, both," I told them.
The two Telkan made motions of embarrassment before they shuffled off, carrying their power washer and the water tanks with them.
I clopped up the ramp, settling into the combat couch. I leaned forward and pushed my face against the gunner's sight. I activated the tank's systems and felt it come to life around me as my faithful crew climbed in, the power ramp whining as it raised, the load of sandbags attached to the outside face providing more weight than the motors were used to.
I ignored the smell of burning metal.
Mal-Kar drove the tank out of the spot in the woods, weaving between the camo nets hanging between the trees. According to the Terrans they would scatter LIDAR and RADAR and prevent Precursor scanners from spotting anyone in the woods.
We passed holes dug in the ground by determined civilians armed only with shovels. Inside each hole were three or four civilians behind a heavy gun.
There had been plenty that had never been fired and only dropped once for me to arm them with.
As we got further out of the forest/park we saw how the holes had cover. Plas covered with dirt, with firing slits. I could see what I had learned were 'ranging stakes' further out, to let the gunners know the range of any targets.
More than a few of the civilians raised a clench fist to my tank as I drove by, some even calling out my name or the name of one of my crew.
I knew I would be punished for what I had done the night before.
I had armed the neo-sapients. Given them the guns that my own people, my fellow members of the Great Herd, had dropped in panicked flight. Ordered them to 'dig in', showed them how to fight, given them Terran technical documents for digging combat positions by hand, Terran documents on how to use the radio net.
They had put the time to good use and had been very persistent in learning what I was trying to teach them.
'Jawnconnor Time' the Terrans called it.
Mal-Kar had written the name "Timekeeper" on the barrel of our tank. A joke that made sense to us, but probably to none other.
We exited the trees, the hovertank hitting the thickly polluted river, sending up a spray of water to either side of us. The lifters, hoverbuses, and ambulance all followed, the water brown with a thick layer of rainbow oily effluvia on the top. Charred bodies and debris slowly floated in the current.
I put them out of my mind, despite the way it made my chest hurt.
We headed into a gap in the river retaining wall, moving into a massive culvert, the thin layer of water spraying up around us.
A dozen Precursor strikers roared by overhead, chased by Terran strikers and air mobile hovercraft, the shell casings from the Terran vehicles raining down around us, making chiming noises as they bounced off exposed armor or the ferrocrete of the culvert.
"Eyes wide, fingers on the trigger," I said over the tiny battle tactical net I'd managed to get cobbled together. It wasn't much, had the wrong headers to be tied into the planetary network, but it worked for our small force.
A building groaned to the side and began to collapse in on itself, the floors inside falling first, pulling the outside frame and facing in after it. It gave a steady roar as it fell in a strange candle-like plume of ferrocrete dust and twisted endosteel. The fires inside colored the dust and smoke red as the building finally finished collapsing and sent up a massive cloud of debris.
The dust washed over us, making the battlescreens crackle and snap at the attempted intrusion.
One of the crew served kinetic weapons on top of Bus Two opened up with a quick burst. I tensed, waiting, but no "Contact" came over the radio and I knew that the gunner had seen something suspicious and reconned it by shooting it a few times.
If Mal-Kar's Digital Omnimessiah didn't want us to recon by fire he wouldn't have invented triggers.
"Got a public communicator message coming in," Feelmeenta said, sitting up in her chair and putting one hand to the side of her helmet. "Immature Lanaktallan female, a bunch of others, they've got children and wounded. I'm patching in Ambo-One."
"Do you have a fix on their position?" I asked.
"Storm drain, one of the Tukna'rn ripped the grate off and got them inside. They've been there since the first day," Feelmeenta said.
"All units, eyes out, we've got survivors," I said over the comlink. I got back "yeah", "yes, boss", "OK", "affirmative", and "Sure."
My men weren't much on radio discipline and proper radio procedure, but they were the finest men the universe had ever known as they followed me through the smoke and fire of the murdered city.
Mal-Kar's gentle touch on the tank's controls wove a smooth pattern to the storm drain. There were kinetic and plasma and laser impact scars around the drain and someone had pushed dumpsters in front of it. The dumpster had all been shattered by combat.
The ambulance moved in front of the tunnel and lowered the back deck. I saw the filly exit with her Simba and Goodboi escorts.
I grabbed my weapon and hit the stud on my couch, the hatch opening and the couch raising as I cocked the rifle. It wasn't the plasma rifle I had previously held, I had no idea what had happened to it. Instead it was a brutal and ugly Terran weapon that shaved slivers of metal off of a block to create some weird variable munition.
The Terran who had gave it to me had set it to APDSDE (armor piercing discarding sabot density enhanced) and I had seen no reason to change it back.
"Most High," Feelmeenta started to protest.
"I will not allow her to go somewhere I am loathe to step myself," I snapped. "Eyes out, scanners up. Get a recon drone, two weapon drones, and a commo drone up, try to establish communication with Refugee Point Lima."
By the time I had finished my orders I had reached the tunnel entrance and managed to catch up to the filly, who barely acknowledged my presence as I passed her.
The ferrocrete of the tunnel was pitted and scarred, cratered and scorched, by combat. We passed several PAWM carcasses, their bodies damaged by close quarters fighting.
Some of them looked like they had been attacked with a standard vibro-axe carried by emergency services to get through modern hyper-alloys for rescue missions.
There were bodies of Tukna'rn too. Only three, but each one was a dagger in my chest.
"DON'T COME CLOSER I'LL SHOOT!" was suddenly yelled, the words coming so fast that they nearly blended together. Lights came on, illuminating me and my visor kicked in to compensate for the sudden flood of light.
"Gunner Ha'almo'or, Great Herd Emergency Services, we heard your call," I yelled back.
"Please, our friends need a doctor. They're hurt bad," a filly called out.
"Come up here so I can make sure you aren't a clanker in someone's skin," the voice said. They coughed, a wet sound. "Not falling for that again."
The medic touched my arm and I saw displayed on my visor 'collapsed/punctured lung' as she told me her rough diagnosis.
I turned my visor transparent, moving forward. The Tukna'rn was young, barely adolescent, but he had a discarded plasma tri-barrel in his arms, holding like a weaker species would hold a rifle.
"You're a Lanky," he said, using the slang that had seemed to crop up everywhere.
"I am," I said. "Great Herd Emergency Services. We're here to evac you out."
The Tukna'rn nodded, coughing again.
"You first, it's clear," the filly, no, she was no longer a filly. Fire and blood had washed away her youth. The Matron said.
"If Li'itlewu'un says so," the Tukna'rn protested stubbornly.
I nodded and gestured at the Matron Medic. "Let us go in further."
"They're around the corner," the Tukna'rn said, coughing again.
He moved down the passage, normally used for power, sewer, and water maintenance, around the corner, and stopped.
It was one of the bigger rooms. Maybe used for the depression that would normally be a pool of water, maybe just for maintenance crews to gather. Bedding of wadded cloth were around the wall, ammo boxes obviously picked up from abandoned positions scattered around, and boxes of canned food and liquid nutripaste tanks here and there.
A Lanaktallan filly, not much older than the medic, moved up. She clasped her hands, greeting me.
"I am Li'itlewu'un," she said. "Thanks be that you are here."
I looked around slowly. There a Hamaroosan female sat with a vibro-axe that the handle had been cut in half in her lap. There a Telkan female was drinking nutripaste slurry as she let a N'Kar female tie a bandage on her leg.
All around me was suffering, of civilians who had needed my protection and found me wanting.
The Matron Medic touched her helmet and I heard her give orders for others to come in, to carry litters, to clear one of the buses. I repeated her orders, adding my authority to hers.
"We have a refugee point with shelters," I told the filly. "You cannot stay here. The battle has moved to atomic weapons."
"Will we be safe there?" she asked doubtfully.
"The Terrans have arrived and are pushing the Precursors back, although it is still very fluid right now," I told her. Beyond her the Goodbois and the Simbas deployed purrbois even as the Matron Medic moved through the wounded, putting holotags on them that her assistants could read with their visors.
All too many of them were red for urgent care required.
I watched as the wounded were helped out, heading for the bus. The Matron Medic's assistants were on the bus, letting the two of us know that they were treating as fast as possible.
I put a call across the net for Terran medical assistance. Their medics, their SAR, wore armor that the Great Herd would consider heavy combat armor and carried guns that could shatter a Precursor machine with ease.
Less than a third were remaining when I heard a shout from one of the rear tunnels. Gunfire sounded out, echoing strangely in the tunnels.
"They're coming!" someone, it sounded like an immature Akltak, yelled out.
"GET THEM OUT!" I bellowed, charging down the tunnel, my warsteel hoof shedding sparks as I ran.
The two Akltak females were ducked down behind a barrier as I turned a corner. Beyond them I could see Precursor machines rushing down the tunnel toward us.
The two teenagers were only armed with axes.
"Fall back, retreat to the main chamber and follow your leader out," I ordered, lifting up the rifle.
"But what of you?" one asked.
"I will be fine," I told her.
Either they would kill me, or not. Either way, I could buy precious seconds to get the wounded out.
I hit the firing stud and the magnetic accelerator rifle opened up with a roar. Despite the fact it used magnetic force and not chemical propellant, the weapon still flashed at the barrel, a tongue of flame lighting everything up as if it was using propellant.
The heavy magac rounds ripped into Precursors armor, sending one, then another, then another, crashing to the floor of the tunnel in heap.
"We are hurrying, Most High," the Matron Medic told me. I could hear her breathing heavy. "We're loading onto Bus Two."
"I'm coming, Most High," Mal-Kar radioed.
"Negative, hold position. You have to escort the bus back," I snapped, adjusting my fire and raking another machine. "Get the refugees out, damn you!"
"As you command," Mal-Kar replied. I could tell he was unhappy, but I had no time to be concerned as more PAWM drones pushed forward. The rifle was roaring in my hands as I held the trigger down, bracing the butt against one shoulder and using three hands to stabilize it.
Return fire was lashing out at me. Hitting the barrier I was kneeling behind, bouncing off the tunnel walls, ricocheting off my Terran built armor. A hit between my eyes rang my bell but I kept firing, forcing them back with sustained autofire.
My own rifle would have overheated by now, but the Terran weapon's heat bar stayed stubbornly in the low yellow. I would have been out of ammo, but sixty seconds of sustained fire and I still had over 80% of the ammo block left and three more in pouches on my sash.
"THIS TUNNEL IS CLOSED!" I roared out, aiming low, at their treads, their claws, their feet, their legs. The weapon ripped apart battlesteel like tissue paper, the small machines too lightly armored to withstand the fury of the weapon. "THERE ARE LITTLES BEHIND ME AND YOU SHALL NOT PASS ME TO ATTACK THEM!"
A round hit my chest, making me groan, but I fired back, ripping the arms off of the machine. Their dead were piling up high enough now that they had cover as they advanced, some of them pushing their dead in front of them.
I grabbed a grenade off my sash with my lower right hand, pulled the pin with my lower left hand, and side-armed it down the passage even as I kept firing, the weapon less accurate now that I was only holding it with two hands.
The grenade went off with the bright bluish-white snap of antimatter, showering the tunnel with droplets of molten battlesteel and shrapnel. I felt pain in my right flank but didn't care.
"Almost out, two more loads," the filly, no, the Matron, told me.
"GET THEM OUT, DAMN YOUR EYES!" I shouted at her as I grabbed another grenade. "YOU SHALL NOT PASS BY ME!"
My mouth tasted of hot copper and bitterness as I kept shooting. A round glanced off my visor, cracking it, but I paid no heed as I threw the grenade into their midst. It went off with a sharp crack and a gout of liquefied battlesteel sprayed my foreleg.
I did not care.
In or out of a tank, I was the armored bulwark of the Great Herd. None may pass by me and live.
I was the people's will made manifest.
A sudden urge made me duck right before a hypersonic rocket was fired, streaked over my head, and blew a crater the size of my chest out of the wall behind me, showering me with ferrocrete.
I answered the rocketeer with another burst that found something good.
The robot exploded, the flame and wave of shrapnel washing over me.
"Last trip, Most High!" the Matron yelled. I could barely hear her. I was half deaf, but did not care.
I began backing up, throwing my next to last grenade as I did so. My rear eyes could see the passage was clear and I was easily able to navigate it.
But I had to do it step by step, keeping up the fire, the punishment, the denial on the Precursor machines.
They charged as they came around the tunnel and I answered with my last grenade and more fire from my rifle.
"YOU!" I roared out. I grabbed a vibroaxe that someone had left on a box and threw it overhand, knocking over a robot when the handle hit it. I kept backing up.
"SHALL!" I bellowed, spraying them with full auto fire as I entered the now empty room. I kicked over a box of plasma rounds, scattering them across the floor.
"NOT!" I slung a tank of nutripaste into the middle of the floor and put a burst into it, exploding the pressurized tank so that slurry sprayed out.
"PASS!" The machines rushed into the room as I backed into the tunnel that would lead outside.
"BY!" I backed halfway around the corner and changed my aim.
"ME!" The hypervelocity rounds hit the plasma rounds.
They exploded.
The fire shoved me, the blast wave pushing me down the hallway even though I braced my hooves, sparks showering from my hoofshoes as I leaned forward into the blast. Alarms started wailing and the front of my armor flashed yellow on my HUD, but I did not care.
I kept backing up after the blastwave passed me.
"All loaded, get out of there, Most High," Lu'ucilu'u said.
"Leave the back ramp open!" I yelled, managing to whirl around. I turned backwards at the mid-waist, watching in 'front' of me with my rear eyes, firing the rifle as I galloped wildly down the tunnel. My fire wasn't accurate, but they couldn't dodge and I couldn't miss as I fired 'behind' me.
My tank wobbled into sight, barrel facing backwards, the loading ramp down, the rear battlescreen off. Rounds that got by me sparked off the armor of the tank.
I could see the interior of my faithful tank, Timekeeper*, and galloped up the ramp. I let go of the rifle, letting the autosling pull it tight against my right forward flank as I threw myself against the gunner's sight, lifting my cybernetic hoof.*
The shot lined up, aimed at the scarred and battered chassis of the lead robot.
"YOU!" I stomped the firing bar.
The Terran "Enhanced Lanaktallan Plasma Munition Mark IV" detonated.
The loader whined as I lifted my hoof. The back deck loading ramp was whining as it closed.
"SHALL!" I stomped the bar again. The loading ramp was almost halfway up.
"NOT!" again.
The loading ramp thumped into place.
"PASS!" I fired the final shot as Mal-Kar goosed the fans.
We sped after the convoy as I used my gunner's sight to scan the skies.
"We've got them all, Most High Ha'almo'or," the Matron Medic's rough voice told me. "Nineteenth Evac is landing a dropship medivac at the Refit Point Delta. They're bringing in something called man pads"
"We will go there," I said. I was trembling with exhaustion as I waited for the gunner's couch to move into position. When it did, I collapsed into it, breathing heavy.
I rested my head against the gunner's sight, even as I kept my eyes open and watched. My still biological eyes felt grainy, thick, like slightly abrasive gum was filling them every time I blinked.
Within a half hour we reached the Refit Point and Mal-Kar set the tank down. I kicked the button and the loading ramp whined down as I got up from the gunner's couch. I staggered out, looking at the bus that Terrans were running onto.
I watched as wounded were taken from the bus onto the heavy, brutal looking dropship. It was all black and looked almost unfinished, as if the designers had stopped before doing any cosmetic work and said "Meh, good enough."
Perhaps, to the Terrans, it was aesthetically pleasing.
A Hamaroosan female, barely a teenager, marched up to me, her hands clenched.
"I bet you think you're some big damn hero," she snarled.
I shook my head. "You needed me days ago and I was not there."
She seemed taken aback for a second, but she clenched her jaw.
"Riding around in your tank like some kind of lord on high while we were fighting and dying in the tunnels," she snarled.
Mal-Kar started to step up, a Hamaroosan female of older years next to him.
"You don't know what you're..." the Hamaroosan woman said.
I held up my hand. "Let her speak."
"Where were you when we needed you?" the teenager yelled. "Where were you when the clankers came?"
I stayed silent. She did not want to hear my words. She needed me, needed the world, to hear her.
To hear her pain.
"Where were you? Where was the vaunted Great Herd?" she screamed at me, rushing forward. Her little fists hit my armored chest as she pounded on me, tears running from her eyes. "Where were you when they killed my sisters and mother and father and little brothers?"
Her knees buckled and she wilted, crumbling to the ground. I knelt down, putting my arms around her. She tried to push me away, crying, weeping, but I held her tight, rocking her side to side.
"I am here now, little one," I told her as I stood up, lifting her. I carried her toward the medical tent. "I am here now and I will not let them harm you as long as I live."
It started raining. Thick, gummy, black rain.
There was a faint flash, a rumble, and the treetops swayed as I pushed into the tent and handed off the girl, who was holding onto me so tight the Matron and the doctor had to pry her arms off of me.
I headed back to my tank, stopping to grab an ammo block to replace my half used one and eight grenades instead of four.
The tank trembled beneath my hooves as I mounted the loading ramp and clattered to my gunner's couch.
The tank rumbled as we led the way back into the city, the rest of the convoy following me.
There were more who needed me as she had needed me.
--Excerpt From: We Were the Lanaktallan of the Atomic Hooves, a Memoir.
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Vuxten walked quietly next to Sergeant Addox, listening in on the rest of the platoon talking to one another on the chat channel. They were either taking bets on how long the little green mantid had been in cryostorage or bitching about the taste of the nutripaste or their water.
All good.
Addox stopped in front of the door that the little green one pointed at before settling back down on the top of Addox's helmet. Vuxten checked and saw that Addox was running his internal heat at three degrees above normal and raising the threshhold for dumping heat into his heat sinks or deploying the small cooling fins.
"Past. Open and there," the little greenie said. It settled back down and began gnawing on the beef jerky that Casey had run up for him.
"Casey, crack the door," Vuxten ordered. He opened the channel to the rest of the platoon. "Everyone, weapons off safe but fingers off the trigger."
One by one the icons went to amber.
Casey knelt down and started working on the door, bypassing it in only a few minutes. It took a few more minutes to break the weld holding the door closed and Casey took a minute to lube the track the door was set on.
"Ready?" Casey asked, holding up the two wires.
"Ready," Vuxten told him.
Casey touched the wires together and the door slid open. Helmet lights and shoulder lights illuminated the inside of the room with harsh white light for the first time in millions of years.
"Mantid automation, man," Addox said softly.
The computer was obvious. Quantum systems, supercooled, the piping repaired over and over again. The dangling superconductor wires woven through everything.
Vuxten saw the "Phasic Control Maintenance Manifold" right away. Looking at it gave him a headache as the psychic shielding jumped six points. The system was complex, the shielding and casings removed on half of the equipment.
"Dropping my psychic shielding five percent," Addox warned. He gave a low grunt. "Wuff, I can feel the tingle across the back of my teeth."
"471, talk with your ancestor, check the system, see what you guys can do," Vuxten said.
--roger roger-- 471 sent back. --better have turkey for us--
"I'll have Casey fab you up some turkey jerky," Vuxten promised.
--casey use too much lemon pepper-- 471 said, opening the clamshell.
The psychic protection clamped down hard enough the little mantid's knees buckled for a moment. He shook his head, the other dozen green mantids following suit. He climbed down Vuxten, moving across of the floor to the electrical conduits.
--it appears to run off of some form of power-- 471 sent.
Vuxten laughed.
--checky checky-- 471 said. --we will see what we can see--
Vuxten watched the greenies check out the computer systems, the phasic system, the wiring on the walls. He moved over and leaned against a computer console, watching everyone get to work.
"He's asleep," Casey said, jerking a thumb at the green mantid on top of Addox's helmet. "Poor little guy has some serious freezer burn. Probably been in cryostasis on and off since the Precursor War."
Vuxten nodded, remaining silent.
Long minutes passed while Vuxten chewed a piece of gum and watched.
"Glory, do you read?" Casey asked from where he was standing next to one of the computer consoles.
"I read you, Sergeant. Line's full of distortion and interference though," Glory answered.
"How's your dataslicing? Any good at it?" Casey asked.
Glory chuckled. "I'm a DS, what do you think?"
"We've got a Precursor Era computer system here, VI run. Can you do your thing and, you know, take over the system?" Casey asked.
There was a pleasant laugh. "No can do, Casey. Your pipeline is wide enough for me to talk, maybe do some data exchange, but the interference would cause too many errors and your pipeline is too thin for my fat ass."
"Heh, first time a woman's ever complained about the width of my pipe," Casey laughed.
"I'm hard to please," Glory laughed with him. "I'll help what I can, but you're going to have to depend on the greenies. 680 was in Digital Warfare Corps before transferring to the Telkan Marines," she said.
"680, can you lead everyone into cracking that computer open?" Vuxten asked.
--easy peasy lemon squeezy-- 680 sent back.
The greenies crawled over the equipment, using access hatches designed for them but not.
-----------------
Cordexen sat in his command chair, staring at the console he had moved in front of him. He had traced, as best he could with only limited permissions, the areas where the servitor caste had stopped responding for a long period before responding again.
It was a wandering, meandering path from the Deep Ore Miner Maintenance and Processing Bay that led the empty area on his map that Cordexen knew contained the Hive Queens chambers, the primary phasic control system, and the facility's master control computer systems.
He wracked his brain, trying to figure out how the mere passage of the bipeds could be disturbing the servitors. Perhaps they left behind some of their numbers to be devoured?
No, that would be done by primitives, and primitives didn't fashion high tech combat armor or work Substance W.
Cordexen knew he should be alarmed by an alien species invading the facility but he honestly could not muster up the emotion to care much. If they destroyed the facility, he would be free. If they busted down his door and shot him, he would be free. If they destroyed the computer and the phasic system, he would be free.
No matter what happened, as long as it changed the unending status quo, he would be free.
"Warning, unauthorized entry to computer mainframe detected," the facility VI suddenly said. "Security control alert: unauthorized entry to computer mainframe housing."
"Open the door. I will examine the breach," Cordexen said, sitting up.
"Unable to comply. Message is as follows," the VI said.
Cordexen slumped in his chair as the Queen's words were repeated back to him.
"Unauthorized breach to..." the computer started. "Access granted. Welcome 'little teapot', admin access granted. Maintenance access granted. Power user group 'all your base' has been created."
Cordexen perked up again, watching his screen. Data was flowing by at an incredible rate, the screen's refresh capability actually being overloaded by the amount of data flashing. The VI kept reciting groups being created, access being granted to groups, power users logging on.
He watched as the facility actually posted a maintenance update to his screen.
Half of the facility was dormant. The cryopods were at critical. The power was running at one tenth power. Life support was at bare minimum.
He felt the heaters kick on, blowing warm air into the control room.
Cordexen slowly unfolded from his chair, moving over and standing under the vent.
He raised his face up, closing the armored eyelids, relishing in the warmth.
He imagined he was standing outside.
----------------
Klakeka stirred as the lights came on in his command center. He heard the environmental system kick in and felt warm air pour from the vent, enveloping him in a warm blanket of heated air. His monitor was showing a deep level scan of the facility's status.
"Environmental system lockout lifted by admin power user 'hip hop soldier'," the VI stated. "Nutripaste lockout lifted by power user 'delicious delicious turkey'. Facility lockout under review by power user 'all the electrons to my yard'."
Klakeka stared at the monitor as data flashed by almost impossibly fast. User groups he had never heard of were taking over systems, rebooting some systems, powering down others, powering up the rest.
"Power user 'Great and Powerful Zig' has issued autonomous mining machine recall and maintenance phase," the VI reported.
"Define user 'Great and Powerful Zig'," Klakeka ordered.
"Cannot comply. Message is as follow," the VI said and Klakeka started to huddle in on himself.
"Hi. My name is Technical Sergeant Grade Six 'proton movement in high gravity low temperature semi-solid strange matter' but you may call me 538. If you shoot at us we'll kill you. This facility is under lockdown by the Terran Confederate Military. Please keep all hands and bladearms inside the vehicle and remain seated at all times. Question and answer period will be after full facility control. The war is over but we'll still kill you if you resist. Turkey is delicious and we will share it with you. End message," the VI said.
Klakeka just stared. "Computer, replay message."
The VI obediently obliged, repeating it.
Klakeka frowned slightly, his antenna crossing slightly.
"Computer, define... 'turkey'," Klakeka ordered.
"Cannot com... data loading. Loaded," the VI said. It suddenly showed a picture of a fat strange looking fowl. The feathers flew off of it, the head fell off, and it suddenly fell in boiling grease. It emerged looking golden brown and covered with a light crust of ground up grain flour. The skin and meat was pulled away, revealing moist white meat that dripped grease and juices.
Klakeka found himself salivating just staring at the image.
The meat was ripped away and dropped to cartoon green servitors, who were all dancing with strange little icons replacing their eyes to display happiness.
"Turkey," the VI stated with authority. "Is delicious."
"I would very much like some," Klakeka said softly.
"Cannot comp..." the VI started to say. "Do not resist. Resistance will be met with 15mm high explosive armor defeating phasic enhanced antimatter kinetic rounds delivered in groups. Compliance will be met with delicious turkey."
Klakeka kept salivating, watching the picture.
Comply? I'll do more than comply. I will put on a hat and dance like a Vurkeent at a mating ritual for a chunk of that delicious looking meat, he thought to himself. It sounds much more delicious than bullets.
----------------
Abriketa petted the little green servitor in his lap gently. He was able to generate enough of a psychic field that through contact he could ease its anxiety at not working on the task it had been ordered to complete. Its chitin was dull and flaky, waxy and distressed, but it huddled up against Abriketa in the cold and dark of the command center.
"Someone please talk to me," Abriketa mourned.
"Cannot comply. Message is as..." the computer suddenly cut off. It had been spouting gibberish for the last few minutes and Abriketa had tuned it out.
"Hi. My name is 'P2=G1(M1m2/r2^3)3' which is the universal law of phasic strength over distance accounting for gravity but you may call me '680'," the computer suddenly said.
"I am Abriketa," he said. Part of him, ancient commands from a queen long dead, wanted him to immediately storm out and kill this '680', but he ignored it, the command no longer having the power to induce anxiety or stress. "One of the facility security commanders. What of you?"
"I am a Technical Sergeant Grade Five with the Terran Confederate Military, specializing in computer system penetration and protection," the computer stated. It sounded different, like the words were almost tumbling over one another despite the steady cadence from the computer. "I'm only dataslicing your archive records so I can spare attention speak with you while I carry out my task."
"Are you real or is this another hallucination?" Abriketa asked.
He had once suffered hallucinations for the entire time he had been outside of the cryopod, his brain taking him back to the time he was in the creche learning to be a warrior caste. Not that the VI had cared. It had merely put him back in cryosleep.
"I'm real, but that's what a hallucination would say, isn't it?" the voice answered. "Huh, rare earth mining, like we suspected. Interesting, the liquid nickle-iron core is nearly 11% rare elements, down from 14%. You've been busy. Oops, sorry. What do you want to talk about?"
"Who are you?"
"I told you already. Call me 680, it takes forever for you non-technical types to say my name and you sound dorky," the voice said. It repeated the longer name, only with an accent that made the name sound mangled and stupid. "So, how long have you been here?"
Abriketa exhaled slowly through his abdomen, slumping down slightly. "Forever. I have been here forever. Since the Atrekna released their great war machines upon the Lanaktallan and us both, betraying us."
"So the Atrekna fired the first shot? Good to know. Willing to talk about it?" 680 asked. "Hang on, you've gotta be miserable."
Abriketa nodded. "I am indeed miserable."
The lights came on and the fans whirred to life. Abriketa felt warm air begin to circulate and sighed deeply.
"I thank you, 680," the massive mantid warrior said.
"How long have you been in the dark?" 680 asked.
"Since we slew the queens. We did not know that they had prepared for that eventuality and they entombed us all here, for all eternity," Abriketa asked. "The phasic regulators allow the computer to give orders to the mantid as if it was a queen. I am unable to countermand the computer's commands to the servitor castes."
"That's interesting," 680 said. "So the servitor caste's higher brain functions are controlled and suppressed?"
"Without the phasic regulator the servitor castes would return to primitive hunter gatherer reflexes," Abriketa said. He gave a sigh. "I so wish they could talk. I have been so lonely."
"Don't move. We have to reset the system. It'll come right back," 680 said.
The lights clicked off and the environmental system went dead.
Abriketa didn't care, still petting the servitor in his lap.
Even if it had only been a hallucination, being able to speak to another after so long meant he would die happy.
--------------
"How's it look?" Vuxten asked from where he was sitting in a chair designed for a massive mantid.
Addox had a good dozen green mantids huddled on his shoulders, on top of his helmet, and on his legs as he sat on the floor. Some were shivering, almost all of them were munching on turkey or beef jerky that Casey had ran off his nanoforge.
Another green mantid came in, started moving toward the computer, passed within a few feet of Addox and stopped. Its antenna lifted and it looked around, almost as if it was waking from a long sleep. It moved over next to another one of its kind.
"Food?" It asked.
"Is good," the one eating said. "Is turkey."
"Here, little guy," Addox said, holding out a piece of turkey. The little greenie took it and sat down next to its brethren.
"How's it look, Sergeant Addox?" Vuxten repeated.
"Pretty good. The phasic system is on its own dedicated systems, the software is all hard encoded, no way to patch it. It's different than the phasic systems used by the Confederacy to ensure no queen pops up and slams a hive-mind down on our Mantid allies and members," Addox said. Several little green servitors were in his lap and he was carefully petting them with one armored gauntlet. The ones on his lap had eaten more beef jerky and then gone to sleep. "If we want to disrupt it, we'll have to blow it in place."
"What about the active mantids? Any data on them?" Vuxten asked.
Addox nodded. "Three warrior caste are awake, pulled from cryostasis. That represents over half of the remaining warriors. No speakers, no queens, looks like most of the warriors and speakers were killed attacking the queens. There's about twenty active greenies, but the computer keeps sending them in here. There's only about fifty more in cryostasis. The remaining ones have largely succumbed to cryo-shock."
"How long?" Plunex asked.
"They've been down here for longer than anything I've ever seen. I'd say the Precursor War. They weren't hatched later. From the records 680 pulled, it looks like the computer would wake them up for emergencies it couldn't handle then refreeze them," Addox said. He gave a slight shudder. "They're the oldest living things I know of, frozen and thawed over and over for over a hundred million years."
"By the Digital Omnimessiah," Plunex said softly. "Talk about endless torment. May the Grave Bound Beauty comfort the damned."
Vuxten noticed that Casey was off to the side, doing something with a hologram projection. He shoved himself off of the chair and moved over to Casey.
"What are you doing, Sergeant Casey?" Vuxten asked.
Casey didn't look away from the hologram. "Back when I met Peak, oh, a hundred or so years back, she worked in psyops. Memetic Warfare Division," Casey said. He adjusted the colors slightly. "You've probably seen her handiwork a couple dozen times."
"OK," Vuxten said. The image was blurry to him, looked like it slightly overlapped itself over four columns.
"Well, explaining concepts to these guys is going to be difficult. We want to make sure they understand if they try to fight us, even if they overwhelm you and your people with their psychic power, Addox and I will rip them apart with our bare hands," Casey said. "Now, funny thing Peak taught me about memes is something I'm going to put to work."
Vuxten waited a moment. Finally, he tabbed up another piece of stimgum and sighed. "What's the weird thing, Sergeant?"
Casey shifted an image slightly. "OK, the more text on a meme, the less effective it is. Nobody wants to read your blathering manifesto, they want to look, laugh, and move on, or get the data quickly. The less words you use, the better. If you have a dual meme, they need to be on top of one another or side to side, instantly comparable, not 'turn over' or 'next page' crap," Casey said. He adjusted some of the lines again. "Now, a properly done image meme doesn't need text to convey its message. In some ways, the less words the more information you can have in the meme."
"What's the weird thing?" Vuxten repeated.
"A good, properly done meme, bypasses language and cultural barriers, even species barriers. We might not know anything about them, but there is a way to communicate, and that's memes," Casey said. "680 is talking to one through the computer, but the language drift and syntax morphology is damn near insurmountable outside of the computer. I want to make sure my meme works right and we don't have to fight these guys."
"So you're going to meme the warriors to death?" Vuxten asked.
"More like meme them to life," Casey said. He laughed. "There's an old classic song I could parody, right there."
"Think it'll work?" Vuxten asked.
"Might be a good idea to try this before we blow up the mountain, sir," Casey said, turning and giving a grin. "If it doesn't, I'm pretty sure we just blow the geothermal in place and ride out on a tsumani of lava."
"Hardy har har," Vuxten said, turning away. "Let me know when your magic meme is ready."
"I'll need a map of the facility, sir," Casey said, his voice distracted.
"Then I'll make sure you get it," Vuxten said.
---------------
General No'Drak moved into the situation room, putting a cigarette between his mandibles as he moved up to the holotank. He'd managed to get a good night's rest and a meal, but once again duty pulled him back.
The Precursors were largely defeated. Mopup was down to the infantry units. The tanks and strikers were largely cycled back for maintenance and crew relief.
Great Most High/General A'armo'o was requesting complete refit of his tanks. More than a refit, a "Service Life Extension" performed on them to bring them up to "parity or near-parity with Confederate allied military forces" that would require the least amount of retraining for his troops.
No'Drak considered it for a long moment. The decision was his, all the way to deciding if he wanted to offer a place in the Confederate military to the Lanaktallan soldiers.
It had proven highly effective in the case of the Warsteel Herd.
General No'Drak thumbed the approval button.
Next up was priority and No'Drak stared at it.
A list of template requests from that psycho Casey.
The most recent one was a recon drone with holoemitters calibrated for Mantid eyes. It had to be able to problem solve navigation issues, among other things, but didn't require a VI since his data bandwidth was low and depending on spooky particle boojums.
Oddly enough, there had also been a template request for turkey meat with Mantid vitamin additions as well as beef of the same kind.
General No'Drak frowned.
What are you up to? he asked.
Next up was notification that his request for a full Elven Court had been approved and was enroute from Telkan with an ETA of less than four days.
After that was meteorological reports on the damage all the atomic weapons and the Precursors had done to the ecosystem.
Well, at least there's going to be living people to worry about their ecosystem, No'Drak thought to himself as he settled in and began reading the reports.
Behind him, Second Most High Ge'ermo'o entered. He slaved his monitor to No'Drak's so he could see what decisions the General was making. No'Drak authorized it with a tap of his bladearm almost absently, noting the radiation levels in the sea water was far lower than initial projections.
Ge'ermo'o sat and watched the data Smokey 'No was looking over and contemplating why the Treana'ad officer made each decision he did.
He was a most observant officer, he was sure he could deduce, given time and information, each of General No'Drak's command decisions and the reasons behind them.
------------------------
Cordexen opened his eyelids at the hissing noise. He looked at the door and saw the bright sparkle of a fusion torch cutting its way through the endosteel. It was a round half-circle, roughly the size of a russet servitor.
Cordexen reluctantly moved away from the air blowing through the vent and his fantasies of standing in a field of grass. He moved to his command chair and sat down, watching.
After a moment the metal fell to the floor. There was burst of mist and then the strangest thing rolled through the hole.
It had two tracks providing mobility. It was a large box with a row of infrared sensors with a pair of infrared projectors on each side to provide it with the ability to see. The little thing rolled into the middle of the room and shifted until it was facing him.
It suddenly played a little tune that Cordexen found pleasing. A mathematical arrangement of audible tones.
Suddenly a hologram flickered to life and Cordexen stared at it.
It was designed for his compound eyes to see clearly, the colors pleasing and well defined.
It was two columns of three pictures. Drawn, stylized pictures that made the subjects enjoyable to look at even if the colors were arranged in a slightly humorous fashion.
On the left it showed a warrior caste Mantid holding his rifle and pointing it at the door. The picture below showed bipeds and green servitors coming in and the warrior caste mantid shooting at them. The bottom picture showed the warrior caste mantid dead in the chair with little skulls for eyes and symbols of displeasure and sadness over the dead warrior.
On the right it showed the warrior mantid's rifle on the floor, the warrior mantid's arms and bladearms were lifted up. The one below showed the bipeds coming in and the warrior mantid holding a little stick with a square of white cloth on it and waving. The bottom picture showed the warrior mantid eating turkey with symbols indicating happiness around it.
They wish me to surrender or they will kill me, Cordexen thought. If I fight, they will kill me. They are familiar enough with my people to create this image. It can be clearly seen, the colors are pleasant, and the artistic style is stylized to be pleasing to me. They know my people and this message tells me that they will not only try to kill me if I resist, they know they can kill me.
He looked at the little robot and it played the tune again. This time the back opened and Cordexen flinched, expecting death to come from the little drone.
Instead it popped up a plas stick with a white cloth on it.
I would do anything just to see the sun once more, Cordexen thought.
He moved forward, picking up the flag from the little robot.
It made happy beeping noises.
The back slid open and steam billowed out. Cordexen jerked back reflexively. He could smell cooked meat, strange spices, and his sensitive antenna were almost overwhelmed by the first taste of something besides nutripaste he had sensed in lifetimes.
A cooked fowl raised up with a little triumphant tune.
"TuRkEy Is DeLiCiOuS" appeared above the little robot in maintenance runes. It turned and clattered away as Cordexen took his two prizes and returned to his command chair.
At the first bite Cordexen had admit the robot was right.
Turkey was delicious.
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On mobile but I will do my best. I do not give permission for this story to be shared on any platforms.
This was 10 years ago, but when I read all the stories on here THIS wedding is what is what I base my shame score off of. Since we are running low on current weddings with the pandemic life, I'm hoping you guys like this.
The summer after I graduated high school, I was invited to a wedding of a friend who had graduated the year before me. She had gotten engaged to a man who was a few years older then us from a religious family. I had a feeling his relationship with her wasn't parent approved, and she was the girl who lived for drama and conflict which is why I think she got so set on this marriage. Boys tended to fall hard and fast for her, admittedly she was very pretty, then back out once the crazy showed, or she cheated. It was about 50/50.
The wedding took place in a hick ass small town (think hills have eyes) in the middle of nowhere about a two hour drive from where I lived (another small town, equally hickish) so me and a friend made the drive up together. We didn't have much money, barely enough for gas, so we packed some snacks for the way there and figured with the food from the wedding we would be fine on the way back.
We arrived at the brides mothers house a few hours before the ceremony. We get there and of course everyone is stressing trying to get ready, but things seemed awfully tense. The MOB was just sour and shaking her head at everything. It turned out she was upset about her daughter getting dildos as a present at her Bachelorette party the night before. She and the bride kept snippingat each other and she was making rude comments about the brides dress, and how the matching red bra and panty set underneath was inappropriate.
Now I will say since I had last seen the bride she had gained some weight so I don't know how far in advance she had bought this dress or was just in denial about the weight gain but it took three of us to get her in this thing. One person to push in her boobs, one to try to hold either side of the zipper and then I actually had to zip up the dress. We literally almost cut holes down the back to make it a corset back since she had a jacket on top of it.
After she was dressed I started looking around at the bridal party. She had told me the dresses had been homemade, I guess I had just assumed who ever made them would be good at sewing? They where not. Sleeves weren't the same width, the person did not know how to sew the type of fabric, there where bunches and hems in odd places, and the lengths in the front and the back where not the same. The men (two guys in her bridal party bridesmen?) Their vests where about three inches too short, after arriving at the ceremony site we saw the rest of the groomsmen looked the same.
The colors she had chosen where black, red, and white. Now a huge peeve for me when it comes to weddings is shade matching. I know what she wanted was that deep blood red, but the colors where anything but that, and at 18 I had no idea there where so many shades of black and whites there where let alone reds. Since the ceremony was at a different place then the reception decorations where minimal, we where up at some campsight in the hills that apparently no one had reserved so we had to book it out of there in a hurry.
They had chosen that campsite due to the creek running beside it, which would have been cute if they had brought the right sound equipment to hear over it. The boom box they had brought to play the music as she walked down the aisle didn't work so someone opened their car door and tried to blast it as loud as they could. It didn't work. The bride basically walked down the aisle in silence, and no one but the wedding party could hear the vows.
So the ceremony was rough. Now we where all starving and trying to compliment them on beautiful vows we couldn't hear. So we headed back down the mountain into town.
The reception site was held at the local community center. To be fair in a town this small there was probably only two options, neither of them great. For decorations it was streamers and balloons again with a variety of shades and some fake flowers as center peices that had seen better days, complete with plastic table cloths. On the stage stood a single speaker hooked up to an ipod. There was a bowl of bruschetta with triscuts that was going quick. No drinks had been set out yet.
We snagged what little of the appetizer was left and took a seat. All of a sudden the bride was standing next to us. No announcement nothing, while we where talking her mother came up to her to bitch about how people where starving and when they should put out the food. This started a whole new argument and they took off towards the bathrooms. At this point I went outside with the FOB who was somehow pretty drunk at a dry wedding, when we came back in the fight between MOB and Bride was in full swing and the groom was jumping in the middle. Name calling, shaming the wedding, calling the bride a horrible host, as the FOB (they where divorced) and I walked past them the mother SCREECHES "I bet you're just fucking loving this aren't you?!?" And PUNCHES HIM IN THE BACK!
Everyone fell silent for a minute and thats when it really fell apart, the grooms parents took off his mom in tears, two bridesmaids tried to bring spirits back by starting the music, one family who I guess had driven some time to get there had broken into the food and was shoveling it in as humanly possible (while actively avoiding eye contact with every other guest) grabbed their kids and bounced. The cake (made by a family friend, also obviously not a professional) was getting picked apart by starving children and probably some adults. Guests started giving up on getting food and started to filter out. The bride and her mom where still screaming at each other when finally they gave up, packed up the wedding party in an OJ type bronco, grabbed the dying cake and left.
By the time all this happened everything in this town was closed! We had to drive over an hour before we hit a 24 hour subway/gas station so we could eat. The marriage lasted 6 months, before the groom decided to post burning photos of their wedding on Facebook.